Mafia Days
by lamentable
Summary: Mello gets what he wants, always . Probably very AU, really. Set in the episodes 27 to like... 30? Something like that; the Mafia episodes. Title is atrocious. Rated for Mello's mouth. DN. Not Mine.


She's just lathering up her hair in one of the few singular showers in the Mafia base when the bathroom door bursts open. Most of the showers are communal, and while that's all fine and dandy for the boys and their egos, she's a "girl" and can't really bathe with everyone else without screwing something up.

Sure, she might be an acceptably important part of their little cluster-fuck intimidation group, but that wouldn't ever stop guys from staring when she's one of the only "girls" around. The only other things that even bear resemblance to feminine characteristics are that one guy's pictures of his daughter (little, two year old, blond bouncing curls sweetheart) and Mello. Of course, no one actually tells Mello he looks feminine - God knows they'd be eating the explosive end of a gun if they did, but everyone thinks it.

So, she showers, as often as time allows, in the solo-bathroom on the far end of the underground complex, away from the group. It's not unnatural to be startled out of her wits when someone who is inevitably male practically breaks down the bathroom door.

"Donno what the hell you think you're doing in here, but you should get out," she calls, leaning down to pick up the soap bottle that she'd accidentally tossed to the floor. "Now," she adds, after a moment, growl in her voice.

"Gotta piss. Lemme alone," she hears Mello grumble, and imagines that he's bitching around a bar of chocolate like he always is, and just how unsanitary that must be. She also lets her mind wander to wonder why Mello couldn't use one of the other bathrooms in the complex, when she hears the lid of the toilet clack shut and Mello sighs like he's just sat down.

She waits, thirty seconds, and then a minute, without saying anything. During that time she bothers to rinse the shampoo out of her hair and curses the men for not even considering conditioner - wasn't exactly a good idea to leave the base, but when they did, the person sent to go shopping was always a hygienically retarded man. After three weeks of washing her hair with body soap she'd finally bitched at someone who was leaving for the shopping outing, and they'd come back with some generic, off brand shampoo. It was better than nothing but she really wished she'd bitched for conditioner too.

"Are you intending to leave or what? Don't really think it takes all day to pee." She's about as snarky as she can afford to be, being naked in a bathroom with the highest-ranking person in the whole complex, but lines and limits hadn't really ever bothered her, or she wouldn't have been in the Mafia in the first place.

There's a crunch and snap as Mello bites off a bit of chocolate. Gross, but not unusual. "Wanted to talk to you," he says around the sweet, and her eyebrows scrunch together.

Talk? In the bathroom? Was this some weird new fetish or what? She voices her incredulity as she lathers up a dark blue loofah with soap and starts cleaning her body.

"You're always running off every time I come in the room." Mello says it like it's a sin for her to want to be out of the way when he snaps. Which he does. Every time he enters the common area near the center of the compound, something (or someone) breaks. They'd originally started off on a team of about fifteen - slowly the number had dwindled down to ten, then seven, then a measly six as the "Boss", a muscled white man who was more hairless than a newborn had to go off and do apparently more high-ranking Mafia shit. Apparently Kira wasn't the most important thing ever to everyone, like most people believed he should have been. One of the only thing Anti-Kira and Pro-Kira groups could agree on, probably. Either way, Mello was left in charge, and somehow, their numbers hadn't dropped any further in the past weeks.

"Can you blame me?"

There is a pause; Mello even stops his suckling on the broken piece of chocolate for many tense moments. The water from the shower head is the only sound. She knows that if she were anyone else - any of the men - Mello probably would have shot her by now. Or at least snapped a bone. Her "passable" technology skills had never been up to Mello's unsurprisingly high standards, but she doesn't need her legs to work a computer. However, something about Mello kept him from invading the cubicle, kept him from tearing off the hammered-glass door, and for that she was thankful.

"Guess not," was his belated reply, and she shrugs as she steps back under the water.

"So was there something you wanted to talk about, Mello?" She'd really like to have him gone before she's done showering. She's not modest at all, but she doesn't really feel like stepping out into the bathroom, naked, with the blond sitting right there.

"Yeah," he says, but doesn't elaborate. Resisting the urge to facepalm, she turns off the water.

"If you intend to sit out there, can you at least pass me a towel?"

"What?" he splutters, and she imagines that there's chocolate-covered specks everywhere on the linoleum.

"Please? I don't really want to go out there naked, Mello." It's not pleading, just a statement of fact; they both know it. However, Mello's cheeks still turn a teensy bit pink, and he still bothers to avert his eyes as he passes the towel - behind him - through the opening at the shower door.

* * *

"Whatever." He steps back away from the shower door so she can leave when she's wrapped up snugly, and tries to remember what the hell he'd wanted when he'd first come in there. It was true that she often avoided him - accepting whatever her assignment was and then leaving whenever she actually did end up speaking to him. If he was really severe enough to bother someone as nonplussable as her, it was only a few notches more before he could get under Near's skin. If nothing else, his time in the Mafia would be worth that.

Working with her made him miss Matt, though, a little bit. He hadn't said anything at all to him the night he left Wammy's, leaving the redhead in peace (or pieces, as it had probably ending up being; Matt really depended on him) as he departed. Just working with another snarky computer-whiz made him ache a little bit to see his friend. It'd been nearly four years, and he hadn't even contacted him. What kind of friend was he? But either way, that hadn't been what he'd wanted in coming in there... What the hell was it?

"I'm coming out," she calls, after a moment, and he turns further away from the shower respectfully. He may be invading the bathroom, but it didn't mean he wanted to ogle her. He wasn't even slightly interested at this point; she was merely a connection to Matt. "Figure out what you wanted, yet, Mello, or are you ready to leave?" she asks sarcastically from behind him, cloth rustling as she dresses. He'd been in there almost ten minutes and had done nothing but create an entire room filled with tense air.

"Guess it wasn't really important."

There is oddly stony silence behind him, and if he had wanted to chance on whether he was decent or not, he might have turned to see if she'd dropped dead from the incredulity of it all. Her boss randomly invades the bathroom while she's showering, just to sit there and pester her? It would figure, he supposed. Sometimes it just sucked to be someone, and today it happened to suck to be her.

"Well," she says after a long moment, tossing her damp towel into the hamper and proving no, she hadn't died spontaneously.

"Well." It is an echo of her words, and Mello stands. His empty chocolate wrapper is tossed into the trash can, and he steps to the door. "I'm leaving, then."

She narrows her eyes and comes closer to him, damp strands of dark hair sticking to her forehead and dripping onto her blue shirt. "You can't think I'd really just accept that, can you?"

"What?" He turns to look at her finally and sees that her eyes are sharply narrowed, cheeks flushed from the shower's heat, and she looks a little bit pissed. "Who do you think you are to deman--" She cuts him off.

"You invade my shower, claiming you want to talk, and bitching because I'm always running away from you, but then you try to walk off before we have a conversation consisting of more than unbridled awkwardness? Hardly, Mello."

Briefly he wonders if she's on the "rag" and thinks that because of it she can have ridiculous mood swings -- going from immodest to bitchy and back to herself again in no time flat. He also wonders why the hell he hadn't decided to corner her somewhere a little less private, and what he'd wanted in the first place.

"Whatever." He goes to walk off again but she catches him by the arm; fingers cold from the change in temperature from shower to bathroom definitely grab his attention.

"Stay right there," she commands, quietly, and he decides to humor her. Halfway out the bathroom door, hands empty of anything to fiddle with, and pockets empty of chocolate. He'd be pissy soon... And soon was coming much quicker when he hears the whir of a blow drier and gets the disgusting scent of burnt hair from the almost-ancient thing. She dries her hair in less than two minutes, and it sounds like she tears a brush through it before grabbing him by the arm again and walking out the door.

"What the hell are you doing?" Is his demand, and he's seemingly ignored for a moment.

"You wanted to talk, we're gonna talk. I don't know what you wanted but I'm at least going to harass you until you know not to interrupt a woman's shower again."

"Woman?" he scoffs, she looks barely months older than him; jerks his bicep from her grasp. He makes a bee-line for the common room, where he keeps his chocolate, and she keeps in stride. She seems to be on a mission; he just wants his chocolate. Something, anything to take his mind off of how obnoxious she's being, anything to keep him from thinking on it long enough to admit that it's his fault she's harassing him.

He keeps his chocolate in the common room because he frequents there more than his own bedroom, and he knows no one who doesn't want a bullet in their face would fuck with his stuff. He keeps his chocolate there because being in anything called a "common room" almost reminds him of Wammy's, and making fun of Near, and by extension, being torn off of Near by Matt when he got too violent.

It's then, as he steps over to the cabinet where he's shelved a few dozen bars of Godiva, that he realizes why he hasn't shot her yet. Why he's put up with her snarkiness. Why he'd barged into her shower like a best friend would.

He was trying to replace Matt with her.

The simple though stunned him. He stopped, hand halfway in the cabinet, and just stared at the dark depths.

The first thing to come after that in his mind was... "Why?"

It hadn't been uncommon when they'd been at Wammy's to barge into each others rooms without knocking -- or to invade one's bathroom while the other was showering. They might not have always been inspired to break down the door by hygiene, but if it wasn't that it was usually because they had something important to say. Sarcasm was only tolerated from Matt - and even sometimes not then. He'd given the redhead a few bruises in time. It was hard to keep a frown from breaking out over his features as he thought, but he was snapped from his reverie when she stepped up behind him. He stared, dumbfounded for one of the very few times in his life, as she lifted four bars of chocolate from their stack and then shut the cabinet, walking out of the room.

With a thunk, he allowed his head to rest against the door of the cabinet. It was basically soaked with the permeating smell of his chocolate, and it calmed him down a little.

"Boss?" Skyer, one of his men, asked hesitantly, looking up from where he'd been hunched on the couch. His rosary clacked against the wood as he turned away from the cabinet to look at the man.

"What?"

"Did... she just..-"

"Yes," was Mello's curt reply, and then he was stalking out of the common room in her direction.

----o.O.o.O.o.O.o----

Five minutes of angry pacing later found him finding her in the kitchen. She was perched on an island in the center of the room, the chocolate bars resting beside her thighs on the granite countertop.

"What the hell did you think you were doing?!" Are the first words out of his mouth when he sees her sitting there, looking cool and collected as she bit into a granola bar.

"Getting us out of there. You were acting like you'd just been told someone died, or something, and I frankly don't like being around Skyer," was her reply, and she throws one of the Godiva bars at him with her left hand. It's surprisingly straight of a throw for what he knows to be her untalented hand. He barely catches the "_fucking pervert_" she grumbles under her breath, but he does, and he almost yells at her before his brain re-engages and he realizes she's talking about Skyer.

"Whatever." He'd been saying that word a lot today, he realized, savoring the delicious chocolate between his teeth.

"Anyway. So what are we going to talk about?" She breaks a short silence with her question and thinks that if he dressed her up just right, he could make her look a bit how he remembered Matt to look. She already has the personali- he banishes all thoughts of that with a shake of his head and sits down on one of the island's surrounding stools. They rarely used the kitchen but it was good enough to double as a dining room whenever they decided they wanted to eat.

"Why are you here?" is the first question that comes from his mouth, and she quirks an eyebrow at him.

"Seriously?" is her responding question, and she receives a look that takes the incredulity straight off of her features and into the trash can. "I want to catch Kira," she says, with a sigh, leaning back across the island's top. "He's obnoxious."

Mello almost spews chocolate again at her words. Obnoxious? No, Near was obnoxious; Kira was a murderer! He goes to tell her as much, and the first syllable of Near's name is out of his mouth when he recalls that she would have no idea as to who Near was, much less how much he agitated him. However, surprisingly, she continues his thought, starting from his: "No, Ne-" and continuing with

"Near is obnoxious?" She phrases it as a question like she's asking permission to suddenly have the ability to read his mind, and he creases his brow to the point that he wonders if there'll be a permanent line there tomorrow.

"What the fu--"

"Oh please, Mello, your feud was infamous," she waves off his curses with a hand and gets up to toss her wrapper in the trash can.

"How the hell do you know who Near is?" he demands, having come up behind her in just seconds, silently, and grabbing her by the collar of her shirt when she turns around. She is speechless and he demands again; "How the FUCK do you know who Near is?" He's louder this time, too, and closer to her face as he glares.

"Are you shitting me, Mello?" She finally replies, grabbing his hand that was so near to her throat and slowly disentangling it from the collar. "Do you seriously have no idea who I am? I mean yeah, I dyed my hair, cut it, and I don't dress hardly the way I used to, but I'm not that different than I used to be."

Suddenly her fingers wrap entirely around his wrist and the other hand comes up to uncurl what had become a fist, so he can press his palm flat against her... Adam's Apple? He gives her (him?) a startled look and goes to wrap his fingers around the imposter's throat when the girl (boy? man?) comes closer, to breathe in his face. Mello couldn't help but inhale, finding the scent of a chocolate-chip granola bar, and something much more familiar. Cigarette smoke?

"Who the _fuck_ are you?" He manages to wrap his hands around the others throat this time, and shakes her (him, but changing the pronoun in his mind was... baffling, he really couldn't believe this) roughly.

"You don't remember me, Mels?" Her voice has deepened back to what was apparently her normal pitch, and Mello's eyes widen when his brain, while already having accepted the possibility, makes the connection that _This Is Matt._

"Matt?" He whispers, harshly, releasing his once red-headed friend and peering into blue eyes.

"Word," the gamer replies, sticking out his tongue.

"Prove it." Mello's demand doesn't surprise anyone, especially not him, but he still can't believe anything about the situation. Matt? There? In the Mafia with him, all this time? She had appeared not soon after he'd worked his way into this particular sect of the mafia, bringing acceptable hacker/technology skills to the table.

"Fine," he replies, and leans forward to place his mouth by Mello's ear. The "Mihael, what do you want me to do to prove it?" is expected but he is still surprised. It's Matt! It's really Matt! Matt was the only person other than L or Roger to know his name... Oh God in Heaven it was a miracle. Just what he'd been wanting, and it'd fell into his lap.

Mello hadn't been this ecstatic in a long, long time, and if he hadn't had a Mafia-badass look to keep up, he might have hugged his friend. But as it was, he did have to keep up appearances, and he releases the once-redhead with a look.

Mello backs off, back to his seat at the island, and Matt takes a seat beside him, sitting like a girl even though Mello knows he's not -- all to keep up appearances. Mello wants to ask questions, wants to demand why Matt is here, in the Mafia, having followed him.. and as a "girl", nonetheless! The urge is resisted however, as Matt leans his head over onto Mello's shoulder, and let's out a sigh.

It's right at that moment when Skyer walks into the room, and the underling immediately started guffawing.

"Are you seriously trying to cuddle with Mello, Natla? You're such a dumb slut to be in the Mafia," the fool laughs, and Matt brings his head up. There hadn't been any romantic inclination to the way he was sitting with Mello, and he cocks his head to the side as the hammer of a pistol is pulled back.

"Skyer. Shut the hell up. Go away." Mello is curt and gestures to the door with his gun, and the guy almost shits himself trying to get out.

"I'll explain later," Matt says finally, after Skyer has gone away and he's resting his head on the granite counter top now instead of Mello's shoulder. Mello is pissed that he'd been so close to Matt this whole time! So close! And he'd never even noticed anything conspicuous about the femininity of the hacker... That was probably the most insulting thing of it all. Mello's best friend in the whole world had been able to hoodwink him, even if he hadn't seen the other in almost four years. Of course, memories fade with time, but he'd thought he would remember...

It didn't matter now, though, his friend was there - friends were the only thing they would ever be and every want to be - and this Mafia business just got a whole lot more tolerable.

----

AN: So, uh... First Death Note story. Ever. It's total crap, I know.  
It originally stemmed from an idea brought on only by sleep deprivation and taking a shower at 2 in the afternoon. x.x  
Talking to yourself, pretending the person that's talking to you is Mello, in the shower makes for some really weird... um... Everything. Yeah.  
I'd originally intended this to be an OC/Mello interaction fic (nothing fluffy or anything - Mello has enough problems without me throwing a girl at him), but I couldn't really see where I was trying to go with it so I changed some words and made the girl Matt instead.

If anyone is wondering, "Natla" came from a video game -- Tomb Raider -- she's the "villian", if you will. It's nerdy but not well-known enough to be obvious, which seems like something Matt would have picked, I think. Matt is not an actual girl in this fic, he's merely pretending to be one, so I'm afraid there's no genderswitch here. No pairings, either, for that matter.  
Additionally, for a bit of trivia, Skyer was one of the actual mafia members (according to the Death Note Wiki)... He was one of the ones not killed by the Death Note, but was most likely burnt to a crisp when Mello exploded the hideout.

I'm aware that there are probably verb tense issues, but I'm entirely too tired to go back through and try to read it.

Read/Review/Win?


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